A question I get asked over an over again is "how do you remove acrylic paint from your clothes?"

All acrylic paints can be tricky to remove from your clothes once dry, but I have a little method that I'll share with you. While it's not foolproof - it works about 99% of the time. You can always give it a try! Hey your shirt already has paint on it, what's the worst that can happen!?

Here's a jacket sleeve that I got a little bit of purple paint on. This purple is from my Claudine Hellmuth Studio line of paints. These paints were designed to be extra waterproof when dry so you can use them to paint fabrics. Good for painting fabrics. Not good when you get them on something you would rather not have paint on. I was wearing this jacket at the CHA convention and it was in my suitcase a couple of days before I realized I had paint on it. Oops!

Not to worry! Rubbing Alcohol to the rescue! You'll want just regular Rubbing Alcohol that you can get from your drugstore or grocery store.

Using a paper towel completely soak the area with the dried on paint. Use A LOT of Rubbing Alcohol and get the area 100% saturated. The resins in the paint will be broken down by the rubbing alcohol.

With your fingernail (or here I am using a coffee stirrer), scratch at the area gently going with and against the grain of the fabric. Keep applying more Rubbing Alcohol to lift off the stain.

At a certain point you get as far as you can with the stain. Here I can still see it a little bit, but it's much better than what I started off with! Throw it in the wash right away and usually even more of the stain will be removed in the wash cycle.

Here it is after it's been through the wash and dried. Very hard to tell where the stain was and one of my favorite jackets is now ready to wear again!

owwww good tip! i just happened to get pink paint om my black sweater yesterday. don't know whar rubbbing alcohol is called in Belgium, humm i'll have to go ask my chemist. oh and i can't wait to get my hands on your new extra time! just what i was missing!!! x

When I was teaching, my colleague wrote her entire list of music on our whiteboard in Sharpie. (I wasn't mad for that, but I was a little mad that she didn't seem to care.) Rubbing alcohol + time + lots of elbow grease got it all off. Thank goodness I had a very patient student who offered to do it for me. It took her 45 minutes, but it worked. Rubbing alcohol is awesome. :)

This also works for paintbrushes that dried up before you got a chance to rinse them out. I usually put about an inch of rubbing alcohol in a cup and put my brushes in there to soak overnight. I've managed to save quite a few brushes this way!

So helpful! Since you are amazing, would you know what to do about crayons that sneak into a load of laundry? Some things have been fixed after a LOT of effort, but I have been sans khaki skirts for ages now, still trying to figure out how to clean off the obnoxiously bright orange stains.

LOL i'm seriously passing this along to my daughter who is attending art school (of course if she'd had this tip last year she wouldn't own the coolest pair of jeans on the planet - but they do weigh about 10 pounds on their own from layers of paint)

Great tip Claudine! I just know I got some paint on my sleeve last night but was too busy having fun to do anything about it. Sure glad I came by here to check out your blog and happened upon this tip :)

Thank you SO much! I have a pair of pants that is almost covered in paint from when I was taking a painting class. Every so often I find other items with paint I had no idea was even there. They may be salvageable after all!

I am so greatful for this tip and can't wait to try it. I recently got some acrylic paint on one of my favorite shirts, too. Had decided to never wear it out of the house again until I read this tip. Really hope it works.Thanks,Alberta Johnsonhttp://www.asjartworks.com

I just tried this with a sundress I wore to an art class. It worked! I got probably 90% out. It probably would have worked better if I had addressed it sooner (I initially used a Tide To Go pen and then stain stick in the wash). I'm impressed! Thanks for the tip!

I had this stain of my favorite sweater for like a year, so I used the rubbing alcohol, at fist it seemed like nothing happened but when I mixed it with my brush cleaning soap (The Masters) and scrubbed with a toothbrush, I got 70% out. Neither of the substances worked alone but when combined it worked! Thanks for the tip

Great tip! My 'go to' method is Mr Muscle..yep, the oven cleaner. My mom was a tole instructor and picked up this idea from a class she took from one of the biggies..wish I could remember her name to give her credit. Anyway, it works like a charm. Just spray it on then wash. Its worth a shot if the alcohol doesn't work!

My husband got paint on a new pair of jeans, he wanted to throw them away. Found you on Pinterest and I immediately went for the alcohol. Did exactly what you said, and it came out without any trouble. Needless to say he was happy and so was I. Thanks so much for this great tip.

Annon- I would rec testing the rubbing alcohol on a teeny tiny area on a hem or some place inconspicuous first. I am not that we'll versed in fabrics so I can't say for sure it won't damage silk but give a test first.

Thanks so much! My daughter wore her beautiful flower girl dress when she dressed as an autumn princess for Halloween. At our church party they painted pumpkins and yes there was paint all over the dress. We were both sick! She so much wanted to wear it again Christmas eve. The rubbing alcohol worked! So happy

Rubbing alcohol not available in my neck of the woods, at least everyone I ask shakes their heads. Is carbontetrachloride the same sort of thing? This is what's used in dry cleaners and that IS available.

zolayou should be able to find rubbing alcohol at your drug store. i have never been to a drug store and not seen it. in the US, Italy, Germany England etc. here's the wikipeida description of rubbing alcohol that may help you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubbing_alcohol

it's usually in the medical type area with the cotton balls and the hydrogen peroxide

I just wanna say thank you sooo much!!! I was clicking on every link on Google to try and find a good solution and I found yours and tried it immediately. I had a bright red softball hoodie and i'm in an art class at school. We were doing pop art paintings with acrylic paint and somehow I ended getting a HUGE bright yellow spot on it! I was so mad because my teacher said it's permanent and will NOT come out and it was one of my favorite hoodies. I just sat here for maybe 20 min with 91% rubbing alcohol and some paper towel and got ALL of it out!!! It's in the wash right now but i'm so thankful someone posted this! So thank you so much again! <3

Thank youu so much! I was just in school and i laid my arm in red paint! Just now, my jacket sleeve had a lot of acrylic paint on it and it had looked like a assassinated someone, but now it's clean! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you"

... This is brilliant. I have my favorite black sweater that I always used to wear in my clay class, and with a black sweater I accidentally got white acrylic paint on it. It made me so mad! I tried stain removers and no luck. So what I eventually did was I took black acrylic paint and covered the white acrylic paint. LOL I'm definitely going to try this!

Fantastic! I had mine on dark-coloured pants. And it disappeared almost without a trace. I used detergent and alcohol rub and let it soak for about a minute and scrubbed it out using my fingernails. The lather from the detergent provided some lather... Thanks for the great tip!

Thank you so much! The alcohol worked to remove black acrylic paint from my olive green sweater. I had a great time at a "Paint with a Twist" party, but almost ruined one of my favorite sweaters. I used the alcohol, a qtip, and then washed it, and you can barely see the stain. Janet -Houston, TX

I didn't have rubbing alcohol, so I used an alcohol based gel hand sanitizer. It worked great!! Since its thicker than rubbing alcohol it sat on the surface of the fabric. I also used a credit card to scrape off the paint.

Thank you so much. Had some dried latex paint on a tote bag. It had been picked up from the inside of my closet, pushed against a wall. One application took off 99% and the second took off the remaining. Used a papertowel and my thumbnail.

Thank you so much for this tip!! I just got home from a friend's house who was painting with her young son. I accidentally knelt in some paint... i got off what I could while there, but didn't want to have to throw out one of my fave pairs of jeans. I searched on Google and found your tip of using the rubbing alcohol. it totally worked wonders, and I can't wait to have a closer look when they get out of the wash! I shared the tip with my friend also! :)

Thank you so much for this great tip!!! You just saved a favorite pr of jeans which had a blob of barn red paint on one leg. It is 99% gone and I can wear my jeans again!!! Again, thanks much for sharing.

Thanks for sharing that. My daughter had acrylic paint over her school blazer today and the rubbing alcohol (which I believe is what we in the UK call meths or methylated spirit) worked a treat. I sprayed a perfumed fabric refresher spray over her blazer so she won't go in to school tomorrow smelling of meths.

Anyone know if this removes the color from the fabric? I've had color from clothing that messed the color in the fabric up. I threw something with wet paint into the wash and it grazed across some hot pink lingerie. Obviously delicate fabric which is why I'm concerned.

FANTASTIC My daughter got a large area of dark purple acrylic paint on her new graduation dress. The alcohol took it out 100% ( The paint was dry before I worked on it, also I used totally saturated large cotton balls) Thanks

I just wanted to say thanks so much!!! I accidentally got paint on a new dress, my mom JUST bought me, when painting the art club float today. I was so stressed for a while there, thanks you so much!! CX

My 5 year old girl came home from school with spots of paint all over her dress... arghhhh... will try this tonight since I've done all the rubbing I could with soap and water and no results.Thanks, Lisa

Thank you for your help with removing acrylic paint from clothing. My grandson decided to paint and got paint all over his new Carhart winter coat. I used your solution and it worked beautifully. Thank you again.

Hello Claudine,My friend needy a hippie banner in a jiffy, so all I had was a king size sheet. I painted one of the peace symbols orange, green and yellow. Looked real good. Friend called next day didn't need banner anymore, but it ruined my sheet. I have tried so many ways, including the one on your site, without even a little paint coming out. Anyone out there who has an answer or the same problem, please let me know. I am desperate. Thank you

I had a black baseball hat that had A LOT of dried WHITE paint on it for 4 years. Thought it was done, almost through it out. Soaked it in rubbing alcohol for a minute rubbed with a dish scrubby, came out right away.. AMAZING.. THANK YOU

This tip is pure genius!!!!White paint + red velour Hanna Andersson dress = one very unhappy mom but Claudine to the rescue!!!! I had washed and dried the dress with paint on it before I noticed the stain. I soaked in rubbing alcohol, scraped the reconstituted paint off and popped it in the washer. Dress looks like new!!!!Thanks a million!!!!!!!